In the case of AOE2/Starcraft, the parchment overlay is typically shown either before or after the mission starts, not during gameplay—it’s part of a GUI page. Meanwhile, the hero dialogue layout is used in-game, as it often highlights specific areas of the map, such as the player's starting position, key locations to reach, resources, enemies, and so on. That said, there are many other games where the parchment-style overlay is shown during gameplay and they can be combined.

lovely graphs @ffm2 I find the tech and unit to be most useful if I've lost a lot of spears and want to protect skirms (with brasidas) even when i am depleted of wood.

For those questions I made these charts. 9% of the sparta players do that research at about min. 16. Apparently I did it 2 times too, but it must have been at a time where I already won and just research techs that I find and can afford because I don't aim for this unit.

After playing alpha 23 and alpha 22 for a bit, I'm glad that units got their armor lowered. Pikes with 10H/10P armor were nigh unkillable. This is without upgrades and aura bonuses.

@TheCJ you get to the core of the problem. If others are confused be sure to read up on the booming=turtling discussion to see what causes the main issues with the CS system. For cavalry the citizen soldier eco/fighting balance seems to be pretty good when we look at the early game when hunt is available. The same can be done with infantry, its just more difficult. I believe we can absolutely still maintain a citizen soldier system with CS infantry being useful for eco, fighting, and building while introducing a male economic unit. The balance of the male eco unit versus citizen soldiers would be tailored to make the choice of whether to eco or fight with CS a less obvious one. Yes it will make the eco situation of the game more complicated as there will be more ways to boom, but the potential depth of strategy would be very worth it.

Point taken about versatility. It's probably best to provide options for both. We can discuss what style to opt for with built-in campaigns when the time comes to make them. Might make sense to do a poll. About the "hero talking" mockup: In what cases would it be preferred over the parchment overlay? Could they be used in combination? How do other games do it?

An update: I've added colour to the hero icon, so now you know whose hero it is. Furthermore, I enlarged the minimap and added icons for cavalry units as well.  antiherorush.zip   Suggestions about icon schemes, colours and sizes are welcome. Right now I have not many ideas so I just take icons from chess